Why the Glyph System's random element doesn't add all that much to the game

I would really disagree that TCG like magic are all similar to the glyph system, because of one giant difference: Escalation.

Card games have an escalation system built in where the fight starts kind of slow and then grows in intensity. For example in Magic you put down land to grow your mana pool, as the pool grows the number of cards you can play increases. A lot of magic cards also remain in play after you've payed for them instead of going back to your hand, so as you play creatures your army grows in size, rather than every creature just being a one shot.

It makes a big difference because the escalation makes it so that not every card is equally useful at every junction of the game. A deck needs to pursue a deeper strategy, but also needs to be built with contingencies. Not having enough cards you can use early in the game can cause you to get to the late game so hopelessly behind that you have no chance. Not having anything you can use to finish the game when it has gone on for too long can cause you to lose even if you have dominated the match early on. That also means you need to apply good judgement in what you want to use your turn on, if you try to set up a specific synergy in your deck too early an opponent can counter it before it ever comes into play, if you wait too long the opponent could already be half way done implementing their endgame.

That's a whole different level of complexity than what SotA has, where there is really no abilities you can't or shouldn't use right away. For the most part the abilities are designed for what one might call continuous operation, not discreet matches. In an MMO that's not a bad thing of course, you're going to find yourself in prolonged battles and be happy that you don't need to build up land every time you want to kill someone, but the fact that the fight is not escalating as you play does take away the biggest determining factor of whether you drew a good or a bad card in a TCG.

 

The SotA is bit different in this, but the glyphs need to first fill your hand, so there is bit escalation too, then there are buffs, dots, and hots, so there is escalation in that. And you need counters t oa degree. You need douse or purify to prevent fire dots from killing you.

And while you have lands and mana in MTG, in SotA you have focus, and even though at higher levels you hardly run out of it in 1v1 duels, it can happen, you need to use bit of strategy to keep more focus than your opponent. I hope they will expand on this aspect of the game.

You need attack spells in your deck if you ever want to kill the other guy, yet you need heals, counters, and shields if you want to survive. The combat system in SotA is not finished, I think there is a room for lot of improvements, but it is wrong to assume there is no escalation or that there is no strategy involved.

 

Rasmenar, you've talked me into taking another look at it next release.

I am certainly willing to change my mind. No promises though.

Regards,

 

Lots of great stuff coming next release, but if you're wanting to see more stuff for combat, there's quite a bit on the schedule for Release 18. Chaos skills and the archery re-work for example. Should be awesome. They tend to add/remove some stuff each release though so we'll see what happens.

 

While waiting for SoTA to get finished, I've been playing a Korean MMO, ArcheAge. The RNG runs EVERYTHING in that game, taking away massive amounts of control from the player and leaving it up to the whim of the RNG. It's used in combat, crafting, nearly every aspect of the game.

Without a doubt, it is the one, key thing that most players despise about the design there.

To me, the Glyph/deck system is the RNG in control all over again. Personally I cannot stand it. It's why I dropped from a Knight original pledge and just picked up a lowly entry level one instead. I keep hoping for SoTA to become what I hoped it would, but the Glyph system is certainly turning me off and it's turned off a lot of potential players/supporters just in my own inner circle.

 

I'm still looking down to figure out which is Double Slash on my keyboard and which is Thrust because it keeps changing. There's no reaction, it's just a lot of looking up and down at my hotbar. For a game they said would be completely immersive (and was originally talked about by RG as having no visible HUD), it's pretty distracting. I think, as a card game, it'd be fun (reminds me of En Garde!, as I've mentioned elsewhere), but as an MMO it takes more out of it than adds to it.

I enjoy strategy on the field, not looking through a deck of cards hours beforehand. I want to survey a situation and take action to bring down an enemy, usually a much bigger one. That's the challenge I enjoy. Not put myself in a strategically superior position only to find that my sword attack isn't available and I gotta' wait. "Hold on, the attack I had to ambush you with 30 seconds ago is no longer here now that I've reached you." Knowing I'm a better tactician and a better fighter on the spot only to not get the abilities I need in time because of a random draw which causes a loss is stupid. It isn't fun, it's not innovative, it breaks what very little immersion there is (supposed to be) in the game.

One argument I keep hearing is that it's there to stop botters, and then the next sentence is "Oh but you can lock your hotbar". Then guess what? It doesn't stop botters. "Oh, but they don't have as many options and control over the fight with a locked deck." So a hybrid or unlocked deck is superior? "No, both have their pros and cons and can be good." So botters can be equally as good, based on those pros and cons?

Or, "If you don't like it, you can lock it." If people don't like it and are locking it, it's because it isn't fun. Why not make a traditional hotbar system with interesting skill use mechanics instead of generic (and quite honestly, outdated) skill mechanics with a random use system? "Oh boy, oh boy, my standard, ordinary, barely distinguishable from my auto-attack skill just popped up! Can't wait to use it."

If you did a show of hands of people who have PvM'd or PvP'd, I'd say it's hovering somewhere between 99.9999999999% and 100% of players. If you do a show of hands of people who have crafted, decorated their house or resource gathered, even combined, will not be near that much. Combat is inherent to damn near every part of the game and it's one of the most divisive elements of Shroud. That's not good, no matter how you spin it.

As far as balance with light armor, it isn't a matter of carrying around two sets of armor (like I did on UO) depending on whom you're fighting. The armor effectiveness is directly tied to the trainer you paid in a city far, far away, which means if light armor is the best bet of staying on mages and most others (which you'll find is going to become the metagame), why wear plate? You'll see the same thing that happened in UO: leather rocks, metal sucks, and blacksmiths can stick to their weapons (until bows get OP, anyway, then smiths can die in a fire altogether).

Freedom expressed in thousands of other ways? Thousands?? Really? Name 5. And don't cite combat because the "traditional cooldown system" is designed as the handicap option for players who wouldn't play otherwise. It was a cop out to keep their money flowing but doesn't stand up to an unlocked deck in any capacity. You can't say it's "freedom" when you have to invest the same points in Focus as everyone else to make the deck less random and more usable. That's like saying, "You have the choice of water or nothing. What would you like to drink?"

Agreed. I'm having the same experience on my end, as well.

 

There is a strategy to how the deck works, but there really isn't much finesse to executing it since the game simply doesn't take you through drawing your entire deck. Everything you use goes right back in the draw pile, so holding stuff only ever gives you fewer possible uses of it.

 

Stacking is pretty much escalation as it exists in the glyph system, it just happens more quickly than in TCG's, which honestly is a good thing since fights aren't meant to take 10-30 minutes in Shroud.

Move your hotbar closer to your character model if you don't want to move your eyes the extra 3 inches down your screen to see it (or I suppose more if you use a large monitor). Also - "There's no reaction," is false, you are having to react to the fact that your double slash is in a different spot, by pressing a different key. This is a reaction by definition.

You say it yourself time after time after time. It's what YOU enjoy. Personal opinion. Your personal opinion isn't reflective of the gaming community as a whole. There are a few very vocal and opinionated people on the forums here who share that personal opinion, but if that were the majority opinion there would be a much more significant amount of the playerbase complaining about the ins and outs of combat on the forums and IRC on a very regular basis. It's totally fine that you don't personally like things about the current system, but kindly don't imply that your opinion is a fact.

Also I'd like to point out that a big part of battle strategy and tactics is planning and training - the deck system reflects that planning and training. Thematically, let's say you keep Double Slash locked so you are able to get that ability reliably (I believe, maxed out, it's got roughly a 3 or 4 second cooldown, which is incredibly short all things considered). That would reflect your character repeatedly practicing the Double Slash technique and committing it to muscle memory. Any glyphs that are randomly cycling through the deck are ones that you know and practice, but might choose to use/not use based off the situation. So, yes, deck building for hours beforehand, that is very much part of the on-the-spot tactics that you have available.

Some people do not enjoy random glyph cycling, it's true. I personally find it very fun and I'm not the only person who plays (or even in a minority of players) who enjoy the deck system. The fact that some players choose to use all-locked glyphs doesn't make it a fact that the system isn't fun, it just means that some players don't enjoy it. A majority of players who are active in the IRC channel and a majority of my viewers thus far, have enjoyed the concept of deck-building, stacking, and randomized glyph drawing.

Later on in your post, you wound up criticizing me for use of hyperbole, yes also used one yourself. While I would estimate that a very large majority of players make frequent use of the combat system, there are those who only wish to craft or socialize. It's a small minority but I'd say it's far less than one ten-billionth of players. A good friend of mine made his first bit of gold doing quests for NPC's (There are lots that never bring you anywhere near combat and more getting added every release), after that he's used his gold to buy raw materials, craft items and make money. The fact that at least one player out of 50k-ish actively avoids combat altogether already upsets your estimated number.

Also - If you did a show of hands for people who have resource gathered, it's likely to be a very large majority of anyone who's ever killed a wolf, bear, stag, sheep, chicken, spider etc.

You're assuming that armor is never going to be re-balanced. Nuff said.

Just to one up your challenge, I'll name 10. I'll avoid mentioning announced design goals and simply go with what's already there.
Free to use skills from any skill tree you wish.
Free to have a home anywhere you can find a lot open.
Free to explore the world without having to "unlock" certain areas.
Free to say whatever you want to NPC's instead of choosing a list of options.
Free to use whatever gear you wish since none of it (so far) has stat requirements.
Free to decorate your home as you see fit.
Free to play both a crafter and adventurer on the same character - no need to sacrifice combat skills so you can learn to craft things.
Free to play single player if you're not a fan of multiplayer.
Free to flag yourself for PVP and fight anyone else flagged for PVP, anywhere, anytime.
Free to avoid PVP and shardfalls if you don't want to fight with other players.

That wasn't even a challenge to write up. For more examples of freedom, use your imagination. Freedom is one of the major design philosophies behind this game, that's why one of the most common terms used by game reviewers to describe it is "Sandbox."

Also, I present a challenge to those of you who so adamantly oppose the glyph system: Try playing the game without using it? It's perfetly viable RIGHT NOW. This is something I have been testing out of sheer curiosity for several days. It is extremely easy to play the game with a 100% locked action bar. I have been able to clear every dungeon and challenge in the game thus far, using both random decks and locked-only, and neither way was easier or harder than the other. Here are things that I have discovered:
A locked glyph's cooldown and focus costs are reduced based off of the amount of skillpoints you have invested in that glyph.
With the Locked Glyph focus cost reduction and max skills in a glyph, it's focus cost is the same as if you used a 1-stack version of it.
You can spec in Focus to get the Focus cost of deck swapping reduced to 0, as well as give yourself a total of 10 action bar slots - This means, you have access to 20 different abilities, though honestly you can successfully play the game using only 6 (Source: I managed to kill the Archlapin of Death and Destruction and his consortium of undead, at adventurer level 52, with 6 locked abilities only). When you swap to your secondary bar it's cooldowns are triggered (For balance reasons) but many of your basic abilities such as healing touch, thrust, flame fist, death touch - when you have 5 points in the glyph it has a 3 second cooldown. This is a negligible amount of downtime. In a PVP situation, simply gust of wind an enemy then deck swap and boom, you've got combat abilities off cooldown by the time they stand back up.

You guys are arguing against the random deck system as if there are no viable alternatives, and I can tell you from extensive testing that there very much are. It's been argued that because stacked glyphs have more damage and use less focus, they are strictly better - This is not the case. In the PVP Free for All I hosted, the two people who were performing best, were a level 51 and level 70 using only locked glyphs. I am not going to say that it's perfectly balanced yet, but it's pretty close. If you don't believe me, try it for yourself. Plan out your build and use one that makes sense, and remember what I mentioned above about training any glyphs you use to 5 for the reduced cooldown and focus cost.

Good day.

 

Are there videos of the event? I'd love to see some of the matches from various perspective (e.g. from each of the opponents in a match).

 

There's a video from my perspective (Getting my ass handed to me by them over and over, using the same abilities but unlocked, also being about 8 levels lower than one guy and 20-ish lower than another so close enough to be competitive with both)

www.twitch.tv/rasmenar in the highlights section.

 

Very fair point. Let me rephrase: it's distracting and unfun. It's reaction in the worst possible way, like swatting at a fly buzzing in your face.

Disagree. Steam, and most importantly, other games that people have gone to (Kickstarters and otherwise) who vocally bash and ridicule this game are also places where people share similar opinions to not just me, but many others on this forum. It is a fact that the glyph system is an extremely divisive issue. Whether or not the exact reasons are shared universally is irrelevant; it's a big enough issue that it can reasonably kill this game without significant changes. And being that combat (PvM or PvP) is such a fundamental element of the game, it cannot be pushed aside 'til beta to get it working right. Not balancing skills, mind you, but mechanically fun.

That spin was so intense I'm gonna' be dizzy for days. You're really reaching on this definition of battlefield strategy and tactics. If this was a card game, I'd agree, but it isn't a turn-based game where our characters are ultimately not being controlled, their actions defined strictly by cards. If it was, that'd be crazy fun, but it isn't; we control our characters, put them in situations where we have positional advantages, and then wait. Or, worse, vice versa.

That's exactly what that means. And if enough players don't think it's fun/don't enjoy it (depending on the definition you're choosing to use), then we don't get to keep playing this game. That's how businesses work, y'see, they need money to keep the lights on.

So the people who spend outrageous amounts of their time involved with this unfinished pre-alpha game, of them, a majority enjoy it? Not all? That's what you're saying? What about the people who don't follow this game unless at a distance, somewhere between the Shroud homepage and say, another game altogether? And when you combine them with the minority of people who've drunk the Kool-Aid who still don't like it?

That's a lot of people.

I'm super glad he was spared the ugly monstrosity of combat, then. And you're right, my percentages will likely be off. I apologize for that hyperbole.

When there ends up being 1,000 people playing this game and a whopping hundred of them don't do combat and just role-play and craft, then yeah, that number would be closer to 90% instead of 100%. I was assuming (again, my bad) that this game might have considerable higher numbers of players. My mistake.

Not with the new gathering system. Probably failed thirty times and gave up.

It isn't just armor, it's the fact that armor is tied to a skill. Unless I missed something in the new release, I can't just change armor and the armor-based skill with it to switch from heavy armor to light armor to run after the guy kiting me with meteors.

...so long as you invest a third of your points into Focus so that the glyph system resembles something remotely interesting and usable.

...so long as you've paid out the big bucks now to take up the limited amount of slots there are.

...so long as you like your exploration in 12x12 square feet increments sectioned off by circa-1995 tree walls siphoning you to an arbitrary stone arch to enter or leave said cage.

...unless you want to actually get anywhere with the NPC then you just click the highlighted text.

No, only requiring actual skill points, and seeing that some armor will just make you so slow you'll never actually reach your opponent before they've nuked you to death, making armor skill-based is rather stupid.

...assuming, of course, you spent a ton of money to buy one before the game launches, and post-launch, can find one that hasn't been bought up by the whales.

That's one.

Which you might as well since the interaction between players is so meaningless and arbitrary as to not require their presence. I'll count this one even though there are dungeons that are strictly single player, meaning multi-players don't have the freedom to play this online game with their friends.

That's going to open up so much griefing potential that it's more of a development snafu than a "freedom". This is a problem, like falling through the ground under the world. I wouldn't consider an issue like that "flying" though.

You got some serious spin, Ras. Go to the Full Loot PvP thread and tell alllll the PvMers who are up in arms with pitchforks that the inability for them to wander into a Shardfall and be presented with full looting consequences is a "freedom" they enjoy. Seriously, I'd love to see their reactions.

Obviously 'cause you just rattled off basic game mechanics and said, "See, freedom!" Just because it's a game mechanic doesn't make it a freedom, something to market as freedom no less. It's like when ArcheAge came out and they said, "Oh you have the freedom to own a house." Where? The only reason housing became available on AA was because half the population quit at the same time two months into the game. If the game somehow remained popular, I'd never have owned land, unless I paid such an exorbitant price on it that I'd never earn that money back and still be able to progress forward towards my next goal.

Of ten examples, you got two. 2/10. 1/5. That's even worse. You cite things like, "You can ignore people in a multiplayer game and play by yourself" and champion it as a freedom. Technically, sure, but considering that Shroud will not in any way, shape or form compete with single player games (especially in 2016), it better up it's multi-player aspect if anyone wants to see mounts and boats four years from now in Episode 3.

You talk about "exploration". If you promised a kid he could go explore the Great Wall of China or see the Pyramids at Giza or witness the breathlessness of the world from the peak of Kilimanjaro, for the small payment of $50, and then stood him in front of a wall map, he'd hate your guts. I feel that's exactly what happened here.

1) Armor is broken. I have walked away from the computer and forgot I was still playing. Almost a half hour later I came back swarmed with NPCs and was still at nearly full health (I was starting to take some damage because my armor had actually started to break). I wouldn't exactly cite game imbalance and feelings of invulnerability in a pre-alpha, imbalanced skill system as support for the glyph system, considering you can kill most things with auto-attack (not even needing a hotbar, locked or otherwise).

2) The skills are broken. Some are extremely powerful, others don't work at all. If there's any hope of them getting balanced, I doubt running 6 locked glyphs is going to accomplish the same in a balanced game; if it does, then it ain't so balanced, is it?

Again, you talk about things needing balanced and then say, "Lookit what I can do" with a broken system. Not to mention, you start telling us we have to invest in all these points in Focus to use the hotbar. "Oh, but I can take up whatever skill points I want!"

Who? I couldn't tell, though I skipped through it to get to the juicy parts (lots of sitting around with death debuff).

I was watching your eyes and what happened; I noticed how sloppy your movements were, along with some others. I'm thinking it's because you have to mainly use the keyboard to control all movements (including camera). I can't imagine you even trying to PvP with melee, though, considering much of the fighting was at such greater distances than even polearms. Weapons were only used for auto-attack. Everyone was wearing light armor to stay as mobile as they were, except Harry who kept getting left behind in his heavy armor and then killed. lol

"Pre-alpha balance issues", I hear you say? I imagine that's what would explain how easy it was to PvM with 6 locked glyphs. Interestingly, though, I'm not seeing you use 6 locked glyphs in this fight, or even a full locked glyph system, and couldn't imagine you spamming your chain lightnings with one.

Also saw you miss out on kills because, as you say in the video, "you weren't stacking."

I'm done watching all this. Gonna' do something else with my Saturday morning. I'll take this as my Shroud participation for the week.

 

Except you can do exactly that macro.

I think this is a white elephant that people don't want to talk about, but it is the bane of all developers existence.
If your UI/interface is a limitation to how a player wants to play, or does anything in a formulaic solvable way, they will find ways around it to play how they want to. Period.And from a balance perspective, you HAVE to assume they are doing that, or else you give them an unfair advantage over those who don't.
What this normally means is any system you devise has to be NP-hard, meaning not easily solvable by a computer.

Want to make crafting take a long time due to lots of steps required? Someone will make a macro to automate it at the touch of a button.
Want to have a random event that requires you to click a button at the right time? Someone will make a program that just sits and looks for it then hits the button.

Or, in this case:
Want glyphs to be random? There's a macro that maps each button to a spell, so that you hit that button, it always casts that spell no matter where it is on your bar.
Want people to take time out of combat to merge? Now they have a macro that runs all the time, merging glyphs whenever you're not actively casting, freeing that person to focus on movement and strategy, while gaining an advantage over others.
Want to make glyphs decay so that we have to use them or merge them? Now a macro watches for that and merges them right before they decay, or casts a time lock glyph every timeperiod - 0.5 seconds that it lasts.


All of the above can be made in less than an hour with a basic keyboard/mouse macroing program.

And don't get me started on what can be done when you start having the better programmers hook into a program. Look at UO and it's history of assist/injection helpers. If you try to ban them, you're now wasting a lot of staff time on a perpetual arms race trying to identify users, prove their guilty (harder than you'd think), and prevent their tools from working. And odds are for every 1 person you devote to the task, on a large game, there are 2-10 working to counteract and make new tools.

The way around that is to design systems such that players have all the information they need available to them, and in a way they can use it how they want it. Then they have no need to add helpers. But if you withold functionality for any gameplay reason, someone will design a helper to make up for it. And then everyone else is now at a disadvantage.

 

@Dewderonomy, I had an equivalently lengthy post I was going to make in response to yours, but honestly it's not worth the time. You have a very strong opinion and I can see that it's not going to change. I do encourage you to actively test some more though because some of the information you're pushing around the forums, while it may be the impression you got during testing, isn't entirely accurate. Here's one for example.

I'm not sure if you knew this or not, but you can actually quickly swap gear with the press of a single button. The passives you'd want in the Heavy Armor and Light Armor tree don't require a massive amount of skillpoints invested. You can set up a set of equipment for each deck you use, and you can have 2 decks equipped and swap between them by pressing X, thus allowing you to quickly swap armor sets for different situations. And as I said, it doesn't require a huge investment of skillpoints in the armor skill trees to get the valuable passives for that tree. Heavy armor currently requires more than light armor, but one of the heavy passives is unfinished. Hopefully we'll see the armor trees more fleshed out in release 18 or 19, I believe light armor for sure is already on the schedule for one of those releases.

Also, Heavy armor doesn't slow you down. Light Armor's first passive gives you a percentage bonus to movement speed. Two brand new characters will move at the same speed regardless of what armor they are wearing, unless they swap skillpoints to the light armor passive that makes them move faster, and wear a leather or cloth chestpiece.

Final note: At the moment, Cloth Armor is the go-to. People don't really use leather because the defense increase isn't that far ahead of Cloth, and it has a fizzle chance, so people avoid the fizzle chance. I'm not saying that's anywhere representative of a healthy, finished, and well-balanced armor system, but that's what people are currently doing, at least until they acquire the end-tier Focus ability that reduces fizzle chance.

I guess some people participate in alpha/beta tests to get an early impression of a game and whether or not they'd like it. That's really not the point of tech alpha and beta tests at all, though I suppose it's inevitable that people will simply pass judgement off what's currently there as opposed to what's being made. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "Don't judge a book by it's cover" hundreds of times at this point. I'm more of a fan of "Don't judge a game by it's early access." Things change so frequently that, five months from now, everything you thought you knew about shroud could be completely out-dated. You really should try to keep more of an open mind for an alpha instead of making apocalyptic predictions about the future health of the game based off of unfinished systems.

 

I think the point is no matter how many new skills (or "skill trees") they add to this "combat" system, or how much they tweak out the individual skills, some people (like me) are still not going to like it. The whole concept is just too far off in left field. And the sad thing is, its obvious by this point they will not change it. Their street team may be doing a decent job of promoting it today, but hopefully that decision won't cost too many potential players down the road.

 

Yes. But if you're investing half-ass across multiple skill sets to be "versatile" when the meta-game...

is that, then you're just hamstringing yourself. I get it that it isn't balanced, yet, but this is one of those issues that opens it up to too many balancing acts going forward. If this was balanced with, say, stats (Dexterity/Strength makes you faster, or the light armor passive is based on that), then that makes more sense and is easier to incorporate balance. Right now I'm seeing mages running around with swords and shields, but are wearing cloth shirts. The min-max game is already there, and it will continue to be because the system's fundamental aspects don't create any semblance of balance.

Speed and maneuverability is always superior in any PvP game, and arguably in PvM as well. I don't need to worry about a hammer blow hurting me if I can just outrun them. So what, now people can invest in speed passives with their heavy armor to run as fast as someone who invests in passives in light armor? Is that the balance that's going to be attained? Then what's the point if you're gonna' run the same speed in both full plate and a cotton shirt? Doesn't seem like there's much freedom of choice in such a circumstance because the metagame forces you to take certain skills to even attempt to play the game with a modicum of hope for success.

I do it for both, but this system is such an issue for me and others that, at least for me, I cannot focus on anything else. I don't care if there's a graphical error in mundane random copy-pasted forest grove number 2 (out of 3 different instances for "forest"). Skill balance and template theorycrafting can come in 6 months. But whether I'm PvMing or I attempt PvP (which is kinda' crappy if you aren't banking on mage skills right now) it isn't exactly a fun experience, not because of losing or even being limited by skill options, but because the whole time I'm distracted by a basic gaming mechanic that should feel intuitive and easy to use.

All the various glyphs and skills won't matter if it's cheaper point-wise and easier to use mechanic-wise just to min-max down to 10 slots and make it work. KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) it and make a template that's useful in all circumstances: range, damage, healing/survivability. Those templates already exist, and I doubt they will change too much. But if I gotta' switch between suits and weapons in the middle of a fight, between heavy armor and light armor (which I originally planned to do with dual-wielding and polearms, to fight lights and heavies accordingly), then I run into a big problem: I don't have the skill points to be versatile (the points invested aren't enough to make the skill useful), or I don't have the skill points to afford switching in the middle of a fight (I lack the Focus skill points to swap decks due to prereqs or no points for innates/passives to stand up to classic templates). That freedom doesn't quite exist. I want it to, and it's something I'm hoping will get balanced, but if I have to invest a third of my points to even attempt something like that, I lack the points to have any meaningful options to switch between. My attacks are weak, my cooldowns are slow, my repertoire of abilities are limited.

To say nothing of the fact that the skills themselves are boring and humdrum. We have a "unique" (nice way of putting it) skill use system but no real interesting skills themselves. I'd rather my hotbar be boring but the actual gameplay and skills be interesting than my input be crazy and constantly changing just so I can slash as opposed to thrust (both of which are in the auto-attack movements). Additionally, part of an alpha/beta process is commenting on these mechanics. I bought this game already, and I don't want a Borgias to happen where I get Episode 1, maybe Episode 2, and then they can't afford to push out a completed series because of basic game mechanics being too "niche" to appeal to a large enough market.

I will say I appreciate you showing the video and offering the advice, but you're not quite grasping why there are so many people upset about this, and that's our concern that the devs don't see it, either. This community is pretty heavy on the Kool-Aid, more so than even Star Citizen. I see more people complaining about Shroud on other gaming forums than on this one, and I know the reason why. But just because we aren't hearing those voices in media that's latched hard to Shroud (twitch streams, IRC, forums, sites all based on Shroud) doesn't mean there aren't backers out there who wrote off their investment as a loss and will make up their mind in a year (or two or whenever they decide to release this game).

 

Now I'm slightly puzzled. You have the possibility to use a fully locked, traditional MMORPG deck. You don't want to use it since people have an (unfair) advantage using the random deck. How is that not a balancing issue?
And don't tell me yo have too few slots. You can get 10 slots and swap them on the fly to get another 10. If you ever going to get to need more than 20 skills in a fight, then you are challenged enough with selecting and timing that it's not much different from using a random deck. The only single thing we need is a mechanic to include/execute combos on the locked deck and the rest is simply a matter of ... balance, hence the very last thing you want to do in game development as it is constantly shifting anyway with every new bit of functionality you include.

No offence intended, but that somehow made my day. Did you spend a single point into the harvesting skill you were using? Given the odds you are describing, you either had a seriously bad day, or you tried to harvest a Tier 3 node at producer level 1 and 0 skill-points. A Tier 1 node would already have given you a 25% chance and had you only invested a single point in the skill, you'd be at ~52.49% for a tier 1 node! That is every second try (roughly on average) at a single invested skill-point. What did you expect? Mining gold in the hundreds without having ever touched a pickaxe?

 

I was going to respond to this, but I literally explained this position already.

There's a significant difference between switching between two fixed hotbars with keys that do not change every half second and the random deck that plays more like DDR than it should (except in DDR the damn inputs still stay the same). How can you not recognize that difference?

No worries, you couldn't.

And that was mainly as a joke. I had been playing when they incorporated harvesting last when after putting all my points into mining I was still failing nonstop with a 32% success rate. I would imagine succeeding once in about 20 attempts, but still nothing. It was something that was brought up a few times in the bug area of the last release; not sure if it was, but my comment was facetious and a poke at the boring, similarly mundane gathering system in place. Seems that was lost on you.

 

Sorry, I've read every single posting of yours (and of everybody else in this thread). Maybe I'm just stupid, but could you highlight a single detail about the 'locked deck mode' that is ~NOT~ a balance issue in comparison to the 'random deck mode' (other than the ability to trigger combos as mentioned in my posting)? Amount of skill-points you have to invest, amount of focus you need to cast, delays, amount of slots, ... all of that is a matter of balance. What am I missing here?

 

TEXT WALL INBOUND : PROCEED AT YOUR OWN PERIL

Sure. The difference between the locked deck (traditional or classic) and random deck (whether full random or hybrid) is two-fold.

One, yes, it's a "balancing" issue in that the two decks function entirely different. An example is dual wielding: if you lock Off-Hand Attack, it has a cooldown as normal. If you keep it unlocked, you can chain Off-Hand Attacks as rapidly as you can hit the glyph for it, machine-gunning with your off-hand. There is also the fact, as you said, that to utilize your arsenal of skills requires deck swapping with a locked deck, meaning investing a sizable portion of your points (even at max level) to that feature alone. There are other examples, but you're right, there is a balancing aspect that might be able to be adjusted.

Here's the problem.

The second, and more infuriating part of it for most people who don't like the system, is the actual UI and input. It takes a lot out of the immersion, it's not intuitive, and for a lot of people divided on this issue, it isn't exactly fun after the novelty of the system wears off. The system is also, by default, random; it is random input and output as Aetrion already clearly explained. Despite what others might think, combat is not random. Not at all, unless you think something like pool/billiards is "random" (for those who aren't sure, it isn't random). I get the idea that circumstances in a fight change (your opponent goes on the defense, making that thrust you planned on being ineffective), and the randomness is supposed to represent that. However, it's more accurate and interactive if you could use a defensive ability you know and trained that makes you impervious from the front, which would make a thrust useless, and then have the attacker use another skill he knows (a skill he spec'd into and has trained and knows by heart to get around such situations) that breaks that defense (kicking the shield or sweeping the leg) or circumvents it (cartwheels to the side or flips over the guy or something cool).

It is not representative that both parties are simultaneously changing their tactics, not because of what the other person is doing (action > reaction), but because of what they remember. That is more akin to amateurs (what we refer to in my circle as "monkey brains") trying to remember what to do next, focusing too much on what they learned last week without the muscle memory to help them, not having the reflexes to support them, and not having the "reptilian brain" of pure instinct to support them as it's being suppressed by "monkey brain". It's an awkward position for newbies to any sport or activity, where they know just enough to be dangerous to themselves. I'd like to think my warrior is a little bit more capable than that by Level 50.

Additionally, the system lends itself to certain playstyles better than others. The locked hotbar is kind of the handicapped system, regardless of how you play; in PvE it may or may not matter, as the game isn't finished yet (not to mention AI sucks). Armor is imbalanced so we don't know how effective it will be and at what levels (we're running around with augmented so early in the game, it's hard to judge). This will be sorted in or by beta, I imagine. But PvP, we can see how this is working already.

Consider the locked hotbar and the random hotbar as ArmA and Battlefield, respectively. Not in terms of gameplay, but just UI. ArmA has no magazine info, directional info/map/radar built into the hud, no crosshairs (relying solely on iron sights), no health bar, and so on. Battlefield has all of the above and then some. They work for their own games because ArmA is about immersion and milsim while Battlefield is more about fast-paced action on a larger scale than arena-like shooters (CS and CoD, for example). There isn't anything inherently wrong with either, and both could be fixed to be "better". Not everyone likes them the same, or even either of them, but they work for their individual games.

Now imagine mixing them in the same game. I get to choose whether I want crosshairs, radar, health bar, etc. or go with just a gun and have to figure out the rest. Most people would go for the Battlefield setup. There's more to keep an eye out on (radar, enemy positions, bullet count, reticule spread) but once you understand how to use it, you can headshot people from the hip, you can catch people off guard by monitoring them on radar, you can be more aware of your surroundings by watching enemies creep up on your map, and so on. But that's only if you can manage all of that instead of just look for a target, pull up your iron sights, and shoot.

Anyone who's played these two games won't tell you Battlefield requires more than ArmA in terms of skill; it's just different. But it does lend itself to shooters who are more action-oriented/twitchy and helps with close quarters fighting, whereas ArmA does not lend itself to point-blank shooting. The hotbar difference in Shroud lends itself to a particular playstyle over another: ranged vs. melee. It's a lot easier to back up and strafe, setting the tempo of the fight at range, than it is to react to all of that while doing everything else at the same time.

A mage or archer, in theory, just has to create distance. He sets the tempo and the direction of the fight. The warrior has to do everything the mage is doing (stacking, setting up combos, etc.), plus:
• Close the gap to bring weapons to bare;
• Pay attention to direction to intercept the target instead of simply following/trailing them;
• Hope that his cards are still relevant when he actually makes contact with the ranged (trips, roots, etc.).

In the quarter second it takes for the mage to change direction, the warrior could have been looking down and stacking his glyphs or rearranging his deck. This could have monumental results on the fight, changing the distance between mage and warrior from a few feet to several meters in a blink. Now it takes another 2-3 seconds to regain control of the fight and get back on top of his target, 2-3 seconds the mage now has to heal back up, finish off the warrior or change the tempo of the fight with a nuke to put the warrior on the run.

This happens in melee vs. ranged fights in every game, but in those games you're always looking at the action. You never sit there and gawk at your hotbar, not even 10% of the time (if ever), assuming you know your skills and template/class. While this can happen in ranged vs. ranged, it is most noticeable in ranged vs. melee. This is because the UI detracts so much from the action of the game.

You may say this can be balanced, but whenever there are options, there's always a "best" or a "most efficient". If this is balanced from melee vs. ranged perspective, then it means the mage and archer have to be nerfed in DPS or the warrior has to be such a powerhouse that upon contact with cloth armor, he evaporates the competition with relative ease. "Well, he can have all these charges and gap closers available to cut the distance." Then what, waits to see what cards he draws to see if he can stab his opponent? He likely won't have stacks if he's got cards/locked glyphs dedicated to closing gaps. Switch decks between locked hotbars, one for gap closing and one for stabbing? So he has to invest points just so he can more effectively monitor a mage or archer kiting him? Maybe make it so a locked hotbar is more efficient - then what's the point of the random glyph system?

There are huge balance issues in play because of this. It's hard enough to balance PvP to begin with, whether it's archers vs. mages, two-handers vs. sword-n-board, dual wield vs. glass cannon mages. It takes a lot of fine tuning to get balance squared away in PvP for skills alone, but now those skills and playstyles have to be taken in account of two different hotbars which directly affect skills and vice versa, and determine what skills you can take based on what points you have left over. It's a nightmare from a balancing standpoint. Even after 17 years players can't figure out how to balance UO: pre-AoS saw the mage reign supreme while post-AoS saw tanks and paladins/necromancers, then post-ML had two-shotting archers, and so on. And that's including the hundreds of freeshards out there.

There's also this idea that I despise the card system; I love it - in theory, and not for an MMO. It reminds me a bit of En Garde! (get it if you're into card games), but this system has no reasonable place in an MMO setting. Some things are "standard" in MMOs because they work. Even on the merit of trying something new, it's still more interesting to have a unique skill system with a standardized input interface than a boring and tired skill system with a unique input system.

TL;DR:
• Lack of control over combat through random input interface;
• Lack of control over combat through random skill availability;
• Immersion breaking, distracting;
• Doesn't resemble or emulate combat in any way, shape or form;
• Doesn't deter macros/botting;
• Gives certain templates/playstyles significant advantages;
• Requires too much sacrifice (loss of "skill freedom") to play certain templates, limiting scope of practical "skill freedom" instead of expanding on it;
• Creates balancing issues and makes it difficult to handle balancing issues in the future by creating way more variables than necessary;
• Better options for unique inputs, such as action-RPG oriented gameplay, which would be just as involved/twitchy as the current system (probably less so).

 

Maybe it's better to discuss not the solutions, but the tasks...

I would like to have a combat systems that requires movement as a dynamic element. Just as eg PvP in Ultima Online was about. In a battle, I want to be free in making my descision in using my chosen path of power at the moment I have the intention to do so. I don't see those elements at the moment being part of the game. My combat (melee) is a static & boring random bashing sequence in waiting for the correct glyphe to show to get a combo off. No dynamic at all, no rafinesse at all. I understand that combat is not at all finished and defined, but I can't get any feeling of "fighting" at the moment.

Further, I want to deal with critters that act intelligently, surprisingly, non-predictably. I would love not to be forced to "farm" anything, not for gold, for resources, or Exp. Getting a kill of an elven swordman should be difficult and rewarding, and should not be a repetitive task to get to the next level. And killing one elven swordman should not result in having a "masterplan" to kill the next one, leading to a "killing schedule" that will be repeated over and over again to farm that creature. Here randomness would make sense - at least for me.

More dynamic gameplay, more unpredictability = interesting fighting.